50 - Democratizing Filmmaking with AI with Michael Evans of Creatorwood

In this captivating episode of Brave New Bookshelf, hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite are joined by Michael Evans, the visionary founder of Creatorwood, a pioneering platform that transforms books into movies using AI. Michael shares his journey from a YouTube enthusiast to a key player in AI-driven storytelling, revealing how Creatorwood's innovative Movie Machine is revolutionizing the filmmaking process for indie authors and creators alike. Discover how this groundbreaking tool democratizes access to film production, making it more affordable and accessible than ever before. Visit our website https://bravenewbookshelf.com to view the full episode notes, links and apps mentioned in the episode, and the full transcript.

[00:00:00] Welcome to Brave New Bookshelf, a podcast that explores the fascinating intersection of AI and authorship. Join hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite as they dive into thought provoking discussions, debunk myths, and highlight the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry. 
 

Steph Pajonas: Hello everyone. 
 

Welcome back to an episode of the Brave New Bookshelf. I'm one of your co-hosts, Steph Pajonas CTO of Future Fiction Academy, and I'm also the Editor in Chief of Future Fiction Press. So that's a new one that I can add onto this intro every single time. I'm here to talk about AI with all of my good friends especially my wonderful co-host.
 

But before we get to that, I just wanna say that there's lots of cool things happening in AI right now. I keep getting blown away by AI images, AI audio, AI video, and just like every single day there's something that blows my mind. So I'm always excited to come in here and talk about these things with other people in the [00:01:00] industry.
 

It's just so exciting, and I think maybe that's the only adjective I have right now for any of this stuff. It's just exciting. All right, so I will get through my intro here and go straight into talking to my wonderful co-host. Danika Favorite is just back from an awesome vacation. How are you doing today?
 

Danica Favorite: Doing good. Doing good? Yeah. I just got back from Costa Rica. It was amazing. I still, although I have to say it was funny, I was sweating in places I didn't know I could sweat in. And here I'm back in Colorado and everyone else is complaining about the heat. And I'm like, yeah, but I'm not sweating. So it's good.
 

Otherwise I would love to be back in Costa Rica. But alas, here we all are with these lovely people. I told Steph when we first got on the call, I was like, oh, Steph, I'm so happy to see your face. So it is always also great to be back. For those of you who don't know me, I am Danica Favorite. I'm the community manager at Publish Drive, [00:02:00] where we help authors on every stage of their publishing journey, from crafting the perfect metadata, book descriptions to AI book covers to getting their books distributed to the widest audience possible. And then of course, once those sales start rolling in, if you need to split royalties, we can help with that as well. So I think between the Press, the AI writing tools, the classes, we have everything. And for those of you who are like, yeah, but what about video?
 

Can I just say. We got you, because our guest today is the fantastic and wonderful Michael Evans. Some of you have seen him before. He is a repeat guest. And as Steph talks about all the exciting stuff happening with  AI I think as I have been following Michael, that's that same feeling.
 

Oh my gosh, what's Michael doing now? Oh my gosh, that's so cool. And we were just talking about [00:03:00] just the changes in what he's doing and in the AI world. And I was joking with him like a hundred days from now, he's gonna be a completely different Michael and not completely different, because at the core he is still the same, but just so many exciting projects and that is how fast AI is moving and really excited for that. Without further ado, I'm gonna introduce you all to our good friend Michael Evans, who is returning to tell us about his latest AI project. Michael, over to you. 
 

Michael Evans: Hi. Oh, it's so great to be here. I remember, I think it was like just over four months ago when we last chatted.
 

I think it also aired about four months ago too. And I was like mentioning my like, latest obsession with AI video. And I think that obsession has gone beyond the point of obsession. Now I think it's, it's just my life. But....yeah. For those who haven't heard of Creatorwood, it's [00:04:00] essentially, my latest venture to help storytellers rule the world, which is the mission I've been on for a while.
 

And we've got a ways to go, but this one I think is a pretty big step forward, 'cause all you have to do is upload your book to, we call it the Movie Machine. And, we create all your characters, all their voices, all the settings and objects, and your entire storyboard with every shot planned out.
 

And then once you're happy with it, you can make edits. You press one button and each scene of your story is generated and you can make a full length movie. 90 minutes of film costs roughly $1,100. You can, counting edits and re-edits, probably make a full length movie for $2,000 and that is half the price of what it was just a couple weeks ago.
 

So it just shows the progress in terms of where this is going and it's been really fun to be in an industry where the progress is happening so fast that we can just pass on cost savings and improvements very rapidly. I used to say two weeks ago, you can create a movie now for about the same price of an audio book if you're using human narration.
 

We're officially at the point now where for most folks you can make a [00:05:00] movie cheaper than you'd be able to get an audiobook made if you chose a human. Which by the way, audiobooks with AI narration are great too. But just to give you a perspective of just a couple years ago. You would have to get audiobooks done, you would pay a thousand of dollars for it. Now you can pay not even thousands, oftentimes just a thousand dollars and get a full length movie. And that is not science fiction anymore. Mind you, Creatorwood at the time of recording is still in beta, but we launch to the public in 19 days and we've really cut down the process where traditionally if you used existing AI video tools, you'd have to make a thousand plus prompts. You'd have to try and feed in character consistency, what we call composite images. Feed in all of that, into all these different models, and it's gonna just take you an incredible amount of time. And what we do is root request to different models to give you like the cheapest and fastest result.
 

We dynamically change your storyboard into prompts for you. So you just focus on the story. You don't have to think about the prompting. And we feed in context about your story, all of your characters and the settings to [00:06:00] maintain consistency, not just visually. But also with the voices too.
 

So we take a process that is manual and it can often take hundreds of hours to make a movie, which mind you is still pretty incredible. And we bring it down to something you can do in just a weekend and oftentimes get higher quality at a cheaper price, because not only are you gonna have to do less regenerations 'cause it's higher quality, but we can often route to different models to get you cheaper prices than you normally would because you're probably just either using one or you're not optimizing the best tool for the best request. And we've done an incredible amount of testing to make the Movie Machine awesome. And as I like to say, it is the worst it ever will be now. So if anyone is impressed by it, even in the next month checks it out and is wow, this is cool. Just know that it's going to get radically better.
 

And I say this knowing that it's already gotten radically better in the months we've been working on it, which just blows my mind. But that's not just due to us, that's due to this really whole wave happening in technology right now. And I think, it's going to completely change the film industry, and [00:07:00] it is the time for Creatorwood and we're super excited for it.
 

Steph Pajonas: I love this. I just I love so much about this, because you started with you started with a vision, right? You started with a vision. You were excited about video, excited. You've always been excited about storytelling. That's one of the things that you and I have connected over. But it's one of those things where you had this vision and then you focused d own into let's take your book and make it into a movie. This is how you came up with Creatorwood. And I was just talking about this before we started recording, was this, that, oh, it's like Hollywood, but for creators, right? Creatorwood. Got it. So talk to me a little bit about how this vision for this new company came about.
 

You were working on YouTube just a year ago, so I'm gonna guess that might have given you some inspiration about what to do next with your next part of your career? 
 

Michael Evans: Hundred percent. Yeah. The weird [00:08:00] directions. Life takes you in. Sometimes you don't realize at the time or the places you're meant to be, but kinda my arc goes something like...arc, whatever, where I'm not the main character.
 

But... 
 

Danica Favorite: Yes, you are the main character. Stop it. 
 

Michael Evans: Absolutely. Actually you're not even the main character, your main character's literally the main character now. They're literally on screen now but, i've always loved technology and.... Obsessed with it, obsessed with the future.
 

Probably not too different from Future Fiction Academy. Lots of futurists over there. And I started self-publishing books in high school, self-published 12, which just meant I didn't have a lot of friends. But when I got to college, I did YouTube, and I'll be honest, why I did YouTube is because I loved Hank Green, I loved John Green, and I just thought they were like the coolest brothers. And at the time I knew Hank Green was working in a book, John Green had published all these books, and I was like, I wanna be them when I grew up. And I'm like I wanna make YouTube videos and write books.
 

So I found a way to do both. That led me into then eventually [00:09:00] starting a software company for authors. And then after that I went to go work for Mr. Beast and that was a wild ride. But at Mr. Beast, three big things happened there that brought me to understanding what I needed to learn for Creatorwood.
 

The first was I got an inside look at where technology was going. We worked very closely with the ElevenLabs team pushing ElevenLabs to its frontiers.
 

We were working with video model companies also early on, so I knew everything that was happening and I was fortunate enough to maybe see where the future was going a little bit before a lot of other folks did. That in tandem with my co-founder who is building Creatorwood with me he was building all these AI video search tools and basically AI tools for creators. And me and him went to school together. He was an admin actually in an entrepreneur group I'm a part of, and [00:10:00] when I joined Beast, it was like, oh hey man, do you think Beast would ever be interested in a client?
 

And I'm like, I absolutely will connect you and let's talk. And from there, me and him started talking all the time and became pretty close friends. And it became clear to me that he was that rare combination of brilliant engineer he, dropped out of school like after two years and got recruited to work for a very very good startup, is like their founding engineer and was offered like a ridiculous pay package and he quit it all to do creator work. But, he's very talented.
 

And I was like, okay. I have the smartest engineer I know who loves video. That's crazy. And one thing I've learned with people is if you wanna work with someone who's great, you need to create something big enough for them to see their themselves inside.
 

And he's not someone I was going to go to with some cute little idea. I needed to come to him knowing that we could upend an industry, like that's why we're doing this.
 

And I didn't have the framework yet, but the kind of last learning that I had being with Mr. Beast was how the video platforms work. And I learned really well how the YouTube algorithm works. And I mentioned this a little bit on our last episode, but YouTube isn't really built for [00:11:00] episodic content.
 

It's also not built for the monetization of episodic content. So you have to get a million views to get a couple thousand dollars in AdSense. To make multiple videos that do well, episodically is like very hard. And the same thing true for TikTok, et cetera, et cetera.
 

So you have social, which is built for one-off hits of content in these endless feeds. Then you have Netflix where premium content sits, but no one can get on. And it just feels like we're missing the Kindle direct publishing for film. Like, where can I publish films, sell direct to my audience, and build a business doing it?
 

That was an absurd proposition a few years ago. But I saw with  AI , this is not absurd anymore. People are going to be doing this. They're not doing it yet, but they will. So that's when I called him up and was like, "Hey, let's go build this platform." And funnily enough, right when we had our last conversation, I was like, literally I think that day or the day after is when I like met with him in person and we both decided let's do this, let's experiment.
 

And we built the first version of this. Which was before the Movie Machine, when it was just a platform to upload your films. And our thesis was, you'll [00:12:00] go use the other AI tools, you'll go to the other AI platforms and you'll make your movies and you'll sell them here. 'Cause I'm a pretty big believer in that a lot of this software's amazing, but when it comes to film, it doesn't really matter if you can't build a business around it. It's, it is pretty amazing. You can produce a film for a thousand dollars, that's like pretty high quality. But that should be noted, it's not a trivial expense.
 

If you make 10 films, you're talking 10 or 20 k, all of a sudden. That's not something that everyone could do. But I want to live in a world where you can make 50 movies. So the only way most people are gonna be able to make 50 movies is if you can make your money back. So I thought, let's build the business around this.
 

And it made sense, and I launched it several months ago in the author community and had so much excitement around it. I was teaching people all these free workshops about how to use these AI tools. I'm like, guys, I've already done this. I know how to do all this. Let's go do it. And...to my surprise, no one was uploading anything.
 

And I was like, oh, okay, no one's making, and they were super excited. They were like, I wanna make movies. So I followed up with one. I'm like, why [00:13:00] are you not making movies? It's all good. You can tell me like, because it was free to upload, right? Like we'd only make money when you make money. So it's it's risk free to try it out.
 

And I was like. What is it like, I don't think it's the price point 'cause it's free to upload. So is it the platform bad? What's going on? They're like, no, nothing. We want to do this. We just started it and we followed what you told us to do, but we realized it was gonna take us hundreds of hours.
 

And I was like, yeah that's fair. It will probably take you a really long time. And they're like, and honestly we don't have the time for that. And I'm like. Of course you don't like who, who does. And I forget, like I did YouTube, I did filmmaking, so I understand all the different tools and how they all work.
 

That's not the average storyteller's experience. They write stories, as you should. That's what you're good at. So I'm like, how do we make it so that you can make films without being a filmmaker? And come into super opinionated what if we built the AI video platform that turns stories into film so you don't need to be a filmmaker. And then that's where the Movie Machine was born from. So it was a very community driven process, how we landed on this. So I didn't really come to understand that we [00:14:00] needed a Movie Machine. It was you all and authors who told me that. But I did know that there was a market that could be created here from my experience in video and Mr. Beast and seeing this gap where most people think it's crazy that individual storytellers can actually make films and can actually build a business doing it. Those are two beliefs when you hold together that almost no one believes. And maybe we're just crazy enough to believe it.
 

But I think we're gonna show the world that not only it's possible, but a lot of people can do this. So I'm super excited for that, for people in Hollywood, people all over the world, to be shocked when, the next great film isn't made by a team in Hollywood or a group of AI filmmakers in San Francisco, but a mom in Iowa.
 

That's when we made it. And I think we're not there yet. But I hope we can start to see these success stories 'cause, the world is going to be a better place if we make this more accessible and take down these gatekeepers. And I still think most AI video platforms are even selling directly to big advertisers, directly to [00:15:00] big enterprises.
 

Like I've been told many times that what we're doing is insane. And that's what excites me because I'm like, you think it's insane, but you haven't met the storytellers that I have. Like you haven't met how enterprising indie authors are, what we're capable of. And it's to think that we're limited to like indie authorship as we know it today is just that it's so limiting.
 

Like we can all expand and take on something so much bigger. That's my goal. And I think I mentioned it last time, but I'm still big on this, let's 10 x the GDP of Indie publishing. That's the real aim and I think how we're going towards that aim has evolved. But if anything, it's just more fun now 'cause now it's one place to go and do it all. Let's make it happen. 
 

Steph Pajonas: I think that a lot of the authors have stumbled over the tools and that is exactly why they weren't uploading. It's because they can see how cool it is, but all the little tweaks and all the little stuff that, that you have to do to make it look cohesive and interesting and really cool.
 

That was the part that like got them, that [00:16:00] got them, they were just like, ah, I don't have the time for this. Just like they told you. So I think it's really awesome that you went with software. I understand that making software is a real pain in the butt sometimes. We've put together a lot of software at the FFA. And it is quite a process and it can have a lot of bugs and it can cause a lot of issues, but, eventually it, it ends up filling a space in the market that was empty and now people have tools to do the kinds of things that they wanna do. So I'm totally behind this movie maker. I think it's really, sounds really cool. I can't wait to use it myself at some point, sometimes soon. But what I love about this is that you're thinking forward into the future.
 

You're thinking about that mom in Iowa who does wanna make a movie out of her book, right? I said in the very beginning, when AI text was blowing up and people were like, oh, I'm not too sure how this is going to affect our industry and whatnot, I said, I can't [00:17:00] wait for the next bestseller that's gonna come from somebody who had this idea, they couldn't write it, didn't have enough time, didn't know enough about the craft or whatever, and used AI to finally get it out there, and now everybody loves it. I knew it was gonna come. I know it's going to come. It's only a matter of time. And the same can happen in all these...
 

Michael Evans: It may have happened already. We just... 
 

Steph Pajonas: It probably did. 
 

Michael Evans: You know what I mean? 
 

Steph Pajonas: We just don't even know. 
 

Michael Evans: Yeah. The one from Future Fiction Press is coming. But I think in general I'm pretty confident that moment's quietly happened already. 
 

Danica Favorite: Yeah, I think you're right. And what excites me too is, and I talked about this on a previous episode, like Steph's books are so sci-fi and out there, the production budget for an actual movie of one of Steph's books is too high to ever actually make her movie in Hollywood. I think there's a lot of the great books that you read and you want to see a story. And how many of us have said, "Oh, I wish there was a movie like X," or, "I wish there were [00:18:00] more movies like X." Right now I have a really big problem with movies that are billed as rom-coms with something bad or somebody dies or whatever. 
 

Michael Evans: Yeah. 
 

Danica Favorite: And here's the thing though, like as an author, I can write that book. And then I can go over to Creatorwood, and now I've got that kind of movie that I wanna watch. And more people who are like me, who would like to watch those movies, get to watch those movies.
 

I think this really is this ultimate democratization of that craft, where suddenly it isn't the big, as you were saying, Michael, the gatekeeping, it's, any movie is possible and so many of the ones that we would like to see, like I said, I've got my personal taste. I look at Steph's books and I look at all of these other amazing stories out there that we now [00:19:00] get to see, and now it's so simple.
 

I was just thinking as you were talking about how the cost has already gone down in just two weeks, which to me is amazing because again it's just that further democratization. But Steph will probably remember this, but do you remember, gosh, like a year or two ago where we were all frustrated that the AI was not good enough yet that we could get consistent images for the different covers in a series. And now what you just are telling us is not only do we see that in a book, but now we can get a consistent image in a movie that is consistent scenes. And that to me is mind blowing. 
 

Michael Evans: It's it is it was funny 'cause when we started this four months ago. I had this sort of moment where I was like, I know this is going to be possible, but we're [00:20:00] definitely not too late. There's only one other, you either time it right or you're too early. So I'm like, are we too early to this? Because just four months ago, like when we were starting, like it was before Veo 3, so there it was really like.
 

I think harder to see the viability of it. Like when Veo 3 came out, I was like, absolutely, like we're going down the right path. Let's keep going full steam ahead. But like until that moment when it was like Veo 3, it was like. Yeah. Like you have to really squint at a lot of this stuff.
 

And then Seadance has come out and Runway. There's been an explosion and then at the cost of, it's just amazing in four months how much better it's gotten. And it's really gotten to the point of viability in a short period of time. And I'm happy that we started, when we did it, it ended up being perfect.
 

But there was like many moments where I was like, this is absolutely insane. To even think this is possible. But I think. The biggest thing that we're entering into right now is, like you said, Danika, all the niche genres, quote unquote niche. Sometimes the niches are way bigger than the things that Hollywood thinks are [00:21:00] mainstream, but all the genres that they would never publish, all the sub genres, all the things can now come in.
 

And what I'm excited about, 'cause I don't think this is like Creatorwood versus Hollywood. Maybe there's an aspect to that, but it's really and what's gonna end up happening is similar to what happened in any publishing where so many more people are now gonna be watching films that they love and enjoy that didn't exist before, 'cause no story did that on screen. And sci-fi and fantasy are amazing examples. Because. Sci-fi and fantasy in particular are extremely expensive to produce. The average Hollywood movie now is up to $80 million to make which is a lot of money. That's the average. Of course, there's a median there.
 

Many are less than that. But it's just crazy. And 80% of budget now in Hollywood is going towards remake, sequels and existing IP. There's actually not that much opportunity for new IP to get funded and in a year it's 200 or so. And it's been really interesting because Creatorwood, now we've got maybe [00:22:00] it's gotten pretty big.
 

It's like maybe 12,000 people on our wait list and outta that group, I would say like half are screenwriters. Maybe even more than half, which has surprised me. And we edited the software to also work for screenwriting 'cause it's a pretty similar process. And I know I'm speaking to mostly a group of Indie authors now and I want to speak now that I'm understanding even more about where this market's going.
 

There's gonna be like three market players in AI videos. It's four market players. There's gonna be the studios, AI native studios, which I think are actually really interesting. A lot of them, I think are, there's a lot of time in like admin costs and like all these processes. I think again, better software can solve, so maybe Creatorwood helps a lot of these studios.
 

So I see that as something that is interesting because for an author who might not want to fund the production of their film, although it's getting to be very cost effective, but if that's not something you want to fund or the marketing of it you can work with a studio. These AI native studios are coming similar to how we saw small presses in the indie publishing world.
 

Just to draw the parallel. [00:23:00] Then you have the folks who are net new to this kind of storytelling at all. They don't know about Indie publishing. They aren't even screenwriters. They're just net new to this and would love to write a story for this type of film. Surprising amount of people in that camp, maybe a third.
 

Then there's, I'd say like the biggest contingent, even bigger than Indie authors that we've been able to see grab onto our software are people who write screenplays and screenwriters. And some of 'em are in Hollywood. Some of 'em are not. Their mindset. There's a lot of programming that they need to, like deprogram from right now.
 

And I think it's been good 'cause a lot of them love the software, they love what it's capable of, but for a lot of them, they have a lot of trouble wrapping themselves around the business of it. Like they're going, okay, so I'm gonna use this as a promo to then try and get a studio to then go to a distributor, or I'm gonna just sell it to a distributor.
 

And I'm like, you absolutely can do that for the record. You can take your IP off Creatorwood and put it anywhere you own it, but at the same time. Is that really the play or is that just gonna be a wasted time? And for most people it will be. As opposed to the indie authors who are like, [00:24:00] we know how to market our stuff, we're gonna get our stuff out there where we know what to do.
 

It just seems to me that from like a market perspective, indie authors could run away with this whole industry. Because I'm seeing the other segments of people and they just can't wrap their minds yet around the fact they haven't given themselves permission to do this yet. Like they haven't gotten there...
 

Danica Favorite: to be fair, this is the process indie authors went through too, because I remember when Indie first came on the scene, that was the whole thing. I'm gonna self-publish a book to get the attention of an agent who's gonna get me a big contract. I'm gonna self-publish a book to get my name out there so that the big publishers will take me on.
 

So I feel like we as indie authors have been through this journey. 
 

Michael Evans: Yeah. 
 

Danica Favorite: And so we can almost, maybe that's a niche for us, is to take these filmmakers by the hand and say, whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't even worry about getting their attention. Because here's the thing, indie authors we're doing great. The big five still exist.
 

The main pub, they're all still out there. There's just more options for the [00:25:00] readers, and I think that as indie authors, what you're saying, this is our opportunity to lead in that industry. 
 

Michael Evans: Absolutely. Indie authors are ahead compared to any other skillset. And I think what's happening, and I've already seen it, is we have folks going, oh my God, I didn't know Indie Publishing was a thing or I didn't really wrap my head around it.
 

I wanna now be an indie author. And there's so many people in that camp that we think we're in this big world and there's so many indie authors. This is such a small percentage of the net people who want to or can and do right stories. So for anyone in this community, it's like we have an opportunity to shepherd more people into this community and grow this movement on the book side.
 

This is going to grow the books 'cause we're gonna have more people writing books. And I think there's still a ton of readers, a ton of people really, who are just stuck in mainstream culture, for lack of better words. The only ways they've gone to any form of like stuff that isn't like the mainstream book, the mainstream, this is social media, but they haven't found the [00:26:00] love for this niche form of films. So what's gonna happen is all these niche films will come about, they'll watch them and then they'll be like, oh my God, there's a book tied to this film. Yeah, the book is written first. Okay. I'll read the book. And I'm really excited for that. We're gonna be able to invite more people.
 

It's not just about filmmaking. I think we can invite more people into the author industry. I'm not saying it's gonna grow by leaps and bounds because of this alone, but I've been extremely surprised at like how big the world is. And and as a result, like how early we still are in indie publishing.
 

We're talking about a new thing now, all for it. But like indie publishing is so new still. And I take that for granted. I think a lot of us might take it for granted. But don't, and it's really cool you're here early and I think there's a lot of ways to help people and to ride this wave.
 

'cause this wave of even the book side is not slowing down anytime soon. 
 

Danica Favorite: No. And I think the thing that I think about a lot with authors is, that it's not too late. 
 

Michael Evans: Absolutely. 
 

Danica Favorite: [00:27:00] Not even if like you all have heard me talk about the fact that my life has just completely blown up in the past couple years, and I'm rebuilding and restarting and so I stopped writing and it's like, "Oh no. Is it passing me by?" And the answer is no, because there's still so many opportunities. So if you're listening to this, just say right now it's, we're recording the September 9th, 2025. If you listen to this, September 9th, 2026. Not only is the technology gonna be better and cheaper in fact probably even better and even cheaper than we are predicting right now, because that so far has been proven true with every prediction Steph and I have made.
 

But there's still gonna be so much opportunity for you that you haven't missed anything. So don't think that you're missing out in any way because there is so much room for everybody. This is just like I, I don't even wanna use the table metaphor because it's so much bigger than a giant table that keeps [00:28:00] growing.
 

Michael Evans: Yeah. 
 

Steph Pajonas: And not only will it be cheaper and, whatever, it'll also be easier to use as well. And something that Michael has brought up in this conversation is just like the changes from one week to the next, not only does it get cheaper, but they find easier ways to do things.
 

They can make a run around like roadblocks that jump up in their way. This is September, back in January. I was like, yes, I'm gonna make movies of my books. It's gonna be so awesome. And I ran into roadblocks. I couldn't make consistent characters. I couldn't make consistent. Like even appliances in the kitchen of the house that was in there, right?
 

I was like, that blender changed from that picture to this picture. What am I gonna do about that? That sort of thing. And this is nine months later. And you can make videos and the people can talk in them now. It's, [00:29:00] it blows me away how far we've come in a month. In half a year. In a year. Next year, I don't even know what to expect. People ask me all the time what do you, what's your like five year outlook on AI? I'm like, I have no idea. Like 
 

Michael Evans: I... 
 

Steph Pajonas: ...who knows? 
 

Michael Evans: I can't leak anything confidential, but I am privy to information of the model labs that like, I'm 100% certain. There's like another step change coming in the next, before the calendar year end in video.
 

So that's coming, in quality in particular. So that's gonna be really interesting to see. I don't know if we'll see like another step change in price improvement in the next couple months, but just in this calendar year, we're gonna see like another up level. I've never worked on software like this and I know you can relate to the staff, but it's pretty magical.
 

It's like work on software where we can optimize five to 10 different steps in the process and make it a lot better. And then every step of that process concurrently is being optimized by other people as [00:30:00] well along the way. So there's just improvements constantly and every week there's a breakthrough.
 

It's like we made this better, we made this better, we made this better. So it's almost like my anti sell against people rushing into this 'cause like. It's just gonna get so much better. But I also think, on a timeline perspective I think history is moving faster now. 
 

I think what took indie authors a decade's gonna take two to three years in, in this landscape. So I think it's going to mature a little bit faster. And I'm very prepared for that. That's a lot of what I spend my time now thinking as CEO, is how do we mature this industry? How do we , throw a ton of viewership at this and create a market overnight?
 

So I think people are gonna watch that. The next time on the podcast, it'll be very different. It won't be a movie machine. It'll be like, here's an industry that's very real. Because we're just gonna take a big bet to make that happen. So I'm very like excited for that. And I think, there's some moments in history where you can make the future happen faster.
 

And that's exactly what I want to do, because the truth is that it doesn't matter how fast these improvements happen, they're absolutely not fast enough because [00:31:00] what I've seen is and you'll see this too, like I'm already telling you what your experience will be like inside the movie machine.
 

You'll see it, you'll be shocked for a few scenes and you'll be like, I want this to be better. I want this to be better. I want this to be better. And absolutely you should want it to be better. And it's still great where it's at now, but like it's relentless demand for like improvements, I don't know how good this is going to get, but I know we have a long way to run and we're just trying to like sprint through this marathon. We're not the only ones. I think there's like these rare moments in history where everything changes, and it's not gonna be this pace of rapid improvement forever.
 

There will be a logarithm here. It's going to level off but there's no end in sight to it, and you don't know when it's going to end. It might be way longer than we think for this to keep rapidly progressing. And I think in the meantime we have a really interesting opportunity as storytellers to build a business, to build an audience, to gain foothold in what this is, because the same principles of good stories remain.
 

And I think what's really exciting about this whole thing is that, it's not... [00:32:00] where it's different from audiobooks, and I love audiobooks, by the way, like absolutely, this is all I listen to now. Is that it's additive, right? You can watch the movie and the book, you can read the book and watch the movie, et cetera. That to me increases the value of every reader and every single author business who applies this. Which is absolutely huge. Like you've just increased the value of your IP almost overnight without needing to even market more. So I think those are the parts of this where my mind is just blown. And I'm very excited and I think as an individual storyteller, the thing to do now is to pay attention to, to look and see these other success stories and learn from them because, I have a huge invested interest in sharing these success stories, so I'll be telling you exactly what people do to succeed. I'll be sharing with you exactly how movies will be made, how they actually make money.
 

It's like I, there will be no hidden secrets. It'll all be on a mailing list, all be on a podcast, and I encourage you to follow it because, we have people who are jumping in early in this. Like we have an 83-year-old man. I won't state his name, but it's adorable. And I'm like, he's making a movie right now.
 

That's [00:33:00] crazy to me. So I'm like, we have people jumping in from all different sectors, all different stages in ages of life. And learn from this like early adopter phase that's happening, as we speak. And the cycle time of learning isn't gonna be yours. We're gonna come back in a couple weeks, in a couple months and have so much more new information to share.
 

Kickstarter. I talked to Oriana. Kickstarter is very supportive of AI projects, which is a thing that people don't always know. You can kickstart your movie, you don't wanna spend money out of pocket.
 

Run a Kickstarter now. Get the money up front. I'm telling you, if you raise $3,000 to make a movie, you have buffer room. Like we're at that point now where you don't need that much money to make a movie. It's pretty fantastic. So bang you can make a Kickstarter for a movie. It could be a stretch goal.
 

These types of things, like you can start the funding process. Now, I don't think people need to go outta pocket for a lot of this stuff. If you do it smart. If you do go outta pocket, you should not be spending money you don't have. That's super important. But I think we're at this stage where it's wow, like we're here.
 

I mentioned this because I know two authors who've raised money from investors already. Literally there, there's so much of happening so quickly that I'm like, oh my God, like this is [00:34:00] happening. We're just trying to keep up and I think if someone's excited about this, there's no reason you can't like, take the step to get cash in. That's the most important thing. Start to scope out your film and then start to manage what the business is like, and then maybe this becomes the next thing you do, because I'm making it sound like overly simple. But the truth is that it's not fundamentally different from what we do, as indie authors.
 

The only difference is you're selling a film rather than a story, an ebook or an audiobook. This is not a radically different business, with radically different fundamentals. It's the same thing, fundamentally. It's about your story. So I think it feels like a lot mentally to take on, but it's actually a lot more simple than that, because it's like audiobooks versus eBooks.
 

Yeah, it's different. And this is maybe a little bit of a bigger jump, but it's not like you have to relearn any publishing to then publish audiobooks. Absolutely not. It's that sort of jump. And I think that for me, has been very helpful. Because. It sped up my learning. And I think a lot of folks too, you'll be able to learn a lot more so quickly.
 

And then it's just I've seen this already, like so many viewers get so excited about the fact there's [00:35:00] movies coming 'cause there's such this novelty around this has never been done before. It's like people don't care about AI movies or not. Like they're just like, this is a movie.
 

This is being made. It's a movie. Like what? And they get so excited. So I think that's another really fun piece of this. It's like the only reason this all exists is because viewers are going to watch this and enjoy it. And it's really cool to even just float to your audience like, I'm gonna be making a movie.
 

What? And it's no, you can actually say that and not be being farcical. Like you, you are making a movie now. It might come in six months and 12 months, whatever. It might come in two years, but whenever you're ready, you can make a movie. Watch what your audience says, if you put out a newsletter that says, I'm making a movie, like they're gonna be like, what?
 

And you just be like, yeah, you don't need to know how it's coming. Just watch. We're gonna be cooking. And I've had a few authors do that, and the response, they're always like. I didn't know people would be this excited. It's it's a movie. Like it's... 
 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. Yeah. People get excited. And I love the Kickstarter idea.
 

I love it so much because. This might date me a little bit, but I'm a huge fan of Veronica [00:36:00] Mars. There is a season we do not discuss because I hate that season because I don't like who her romance interest is, but whatever... Point being, they actually did a crowdfunding for the Veronica Mars movie.
 

And I remember that as a fan, I contributed to it. I had to wait through that crowdfunding thing and get the movie. And it is, it's just like a Kickstarter and I think that you are right the people who are fans, your readers, everyone gets really excited about doing a movie, and so I really love that you're doing this work and that you are giving authors this opportunity, but also giving the readers this opportunity because that is why we're here.
 

We want to give the opportunity to readers. And so for authors who are listening, I encourage you to think outside the box, think of these creative ways, check out Creatorwood. And if [00:37:00] you're like, "Yes, I really wanna do this. Ooh, I have a book that's perfect for a movie," think about doing that Kickstarter, because you just never know.
 

$3,000 isn't hard to raise on Kickstarter, from what I understand, if you know how to do it. 
 

Michael Evans: And that gives you buffer 'cause that'll generate you probably close to 300 minutes of video, right? 
 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. 
 

Michael Evans: So that's long movie. So that's lots of editing, like you're, and which I wanna incorporate in. The expectation should not be that like I just plug it in, plug it out, and I pay for 90 minutes of film and it's all perfect.
 

Like any film you're gonna do we do video to video model editing. So there's like edits. If you wanna make small edits to a video, you can do that. Or if you wanna do a complete retake, you can do that as well. Either are great, but there's going to be that part of the process. And there's also another thing, Danica too.
 

There's Kickstarter and there's thinking about it, instead of taking my full book and I'm making it to a full length movie. What if you started with a pilot? You made the first couple episodes of a TV series, right? That expense might only be a couple hundred dollars, right? Maybe it's the first five to 10 minutes of [00:38:00] your film.
 

And you could start to test that and see first of all, do you like it? 'Cause this is all pay as you go. You're not generating, this is not just Creatorwood. We created Creator Wood to help this industry. If you want to use another tool, 'cause it's helpful to you, absolutely do it.
 

I think you'll find that it's very hard, but you can do it. So whatever AI tool you use, it's all, pay as you go for the most part. Veo does require like a $250 a month minimum subscription. So there are like some subscriptions plus pay as you go. 'cause then you have to pay as you go. But regardless, like you're not gonna have to, no one's requiring you to spend a thousand dollars out of pocket upfront, right?
 

So with that what if you just paid as you go and made the first couple minutes? Great. That can be a concept. First of all, do you like it? If you don't, if you're using Creatorwood, I wanna know why and I wanna help you, you can at least test at a level that isn't gonna burn a massive hole in your pocket, right?
 

Then the second thing is you can release it, put an episode up for free, see what your readers think. Do they like it? If they're like, "Eh, this is trash," maybe don't make the whole movie. But if they're like, "Oh my God, where is it? Where can I get this movie?" It's like, great. That's validation you could further invest in this. [00:39:00] Maybe then you charge for the next episode and say, "Hey, here's my next episode. My next episode is 10 minutes long. You're gonna have to pay 2.99 for it." Okay, there you go. If you spend maybe $200, maybe 250, maybe 300 max, making a 10 minute episode, cool. All of a sudden you don't need that many sales to make that money back.
 

I'm not suggesting it's easy, but a little over a hundred sales we're, we're in the green there. Okay? 
 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. 
 

Michael Evans: You can then fund it that way, instead of going out of pocket. That's the one thing I'm wary of with people. I've done this in my own writing career. I know what it's like when this is your dream.
 

'Cause it's mine too. And I know what it's like when you're like, "Oh, I have the money, but I don't really have the money," 'cause I've been there. Like you can always do gymnastics to make things work. And I think we make it as affordable as we can. The technology costs money.
 

There's a lot of compute that goes into this. So we've literally have brought down cost 50% in the last, like literally two weeks. But we're limited in [00:40:00] how cheap we can make it. So my only thing to people is please be smart. It's very easy to say oh, I'll do this and I have this dream and it'll all make sense.
 

For me, I've spent tens of thousands of dollars outta a pocket in my writing career, most of which was not wisely spent, if I'm being candid with you. I could have been much smarter with that money and just in terms of how I spent it. So yes, whether it's Kickstarter or pilots helping you to not have to spend a bunch of money in a pocket paradoxically sounds like it would hurt Creatorwood, but, honestly, I'm mostly interested in the people who can use Creatorwood to make 50, a hundred movies who can build film businesses. And I believe that can be anyone and that person could be you, but it's definitely not gonna be you if your first couple movies are unsustainable. So doing this sustainably is really important to me because I think there's a sort of FOMO and almost like gold rush mentality in the words of Becca Syme that can come from this type of thing. And I just don't think there's a need for that. Despite my excitement, like it's really all chill. Make this fun. Make this about play, play for you and hopefully play for your readers.
 

[00:41:00] And I just, I don't see any sort of impetus to need to put up money that you might want to just keep in the silos for a little while and invest it when it's the right time. That's like my big call to action to people. And then of course if you decide it's a good idea for you, we're absolutely here.
 

But that's something, I want people thinking about that. There's creative ways to get around this. And if our mission is to help every story be seen people have asked us like, why don't we come up a studio? Why don't we do this?
 

And it's our whole goal is to make this whole process as accessible as possible. So you focus on that rather than handpicking movies to fund. 'Cause we really would've to handpick. There's so many. But I also wanna help educationally how you think about using the tool to make it as accessible for you.
 

And the toughest things to wrap your mind around is "Wait. It really is that simple? I don't need to go all out? I don't need to go make a movie to sell a movie?" It's like absolutely, like paradoxically, you don't need to make a movie to sell a movie. You can make that.
 

That's the point. You're not ghosting people. It's not a scam. You're going to make it, but you don't need to make the whole thing to start to get cash in, to start to validate that it's a good idea. 
 

Danica Favorite: Yeah, and I think that's a great [00:42:00] place to end on for us to really understand that you've given us this great tool.
 

There are so many paths for authors to take, and if you are the author that is sitting there, "Going, me, me, me, me, me." Cool. Here's a way for you to do it. If you're someone who's, " Ooh, this is a really cool idea, but I don't have the bandwidth for it." That's okay. Because it's still gonna be here a year from now, two years from now, the opportunity is still there.
 

And as Michael said, really take the time to do what's best for you and your writing business. And I really appreciate that call to fiscal responsibility because we do have that as something to think about as well. So thank you for that. Thank you for that reminder. Steph. Do you have anything you wanted to share before we go into our closing stuff?
 

Steph Pajonas: Just that I'm now like super excited. I wanna make a movie. I'll be calling up [00:43:00] Michael after this is over and talk about it. But I definitely wanna make sure that our listeners can find everything that Michael's been talking about so that even if they're not ready yet to make their own movie, if they can come into Michael's Creatorwood understand it, get signed up for the newsletter, get all of his great information that he's pumping out there. 'Cause I believe he's got a podcast. Of course. 
 

Michael Evans: Yeah. Yeah. 
 

Steph Pajonas: And a bunch of other things that people can come and at least listen and understand what's going on so that when they are ready to do something like this, they can jump right in. So please give us all your URLs and places to send people.
 

Michael Evans: Oh yeah, this is great. I love, love you both, and one of my favorite things to do is to help share the things I wish I knew. Yes. When it comes to that a great place to start is blog.creatorwood.tv. Everything is creatorwood.tv with a sort of subdomain.
 

So on the blog, what you'll find there is a free book called Creatorwood that, I think [00:44:00] probably more neatly than I can do with my ranting in a podcast, outlines what I see as the opportunity and how to think about it, not from just a business perspective, although that's crucial, but also creatively too.
 

So that's great. And then if you're on my newsletter list, you'll get a lot of emails from me in the first couple weeks that are walking you through everything from pricing, to marketing, to tips for creation, and all of that, so that'll all be there. It's just a good place to stay in touch. Next thing is to go to make.creatorwood.tv.
 

Right now it's our home for people to learn more about the Movie Machine and for you to sign up to the beta. And then eventually, like we're opening up the viewership platform soon, but as movies start to get uploaded, which I anticipate starting to see some early signs of life in the next seven to 14 days 'cause we're rolling out beta access to the video generation side tomorrow.
 

You can go to creatorwood.tv to actually check out films, support fellow storytellers. Many of them will be free, many of them will be paid. And as a note about [00:45:00] Creatorwood, it's a direct sales platform in the sense that you get all the emails of anyone who buys or follows any of your films. And that also goes true for the people you support.
 

It could be cool to check some things out there. And yeah I have clapperboards, so if people do really well on the platform, we're gonna come up with a bunch of tiers for it. But we're sending out a bunch of clapperboard awards, so we actually had our first clapperboard award sent out to Novi Kellum.
 

They're like, unbelievable. And they're an incredible storyteller, filmmaker, all the things.
 

Danica Favorite: They're also gonna be a guest soon, so stay tuned.
 

Michael Evans: Oh, good. 
 

Nova's amazing. Yeah. They need to be a guest. They're just. Incredible. So Novi is awesome. But I wanna give out more clapperboards 'cause they're fun, so... 
 

Steph Pajonas: I can't wait to see them. 
 

Michael Evans: You're a director. 
 

You're a director. 
 

Steph Pajonas: Exactly. Excellent. I'm excited to go and check out more about Creatorwood. I'll be checking out the website, and I'll be sure that we include all of those URLs in the show notes when we put together the whole blog post for this particular episode.
 

We definitely want you to come by and and subscribe to us [00:46:00] on YouTube so that you can get all of our upcoming shows. We took a little break over the summer, but we are back. We are back. We've got lots of interviews coming up and we're really excited about them. Is there anything else, Danica, that you wanna say before we sign off?
 

Danica Favorite: Yeah, I think that pretty much does it. We're also on Facebook. We have not done a great job with the promotion. We're working on it. Just please make sure you are liking, subscribing, sharing...all that stuff. Because the more you do that, the more people we reach and you know that's our goal here, to make sure that we're helping as many people as possible and giving you all as many options as possible. 
 

Steph Pajonas: Absolutely. Okay, great. So everybody, we will see you all in the next episode. So from all of us here, we're gonna say goodbye now. All right. Bye everybody. Bye. 
 

Danica Favorite: Bye. 
 

Speaker: Thanks for joining us on The Brave New Bookshelf. Be sure to like and subscribe to us on YouTube and your favorite podcast [00:47:00] app. You can also visit us at bravenewbookshelf.com. Sign up for our newsletter and get all the show notes.